NEW YORK - Now that the dust of the
eight-day Gaza war has settled, the war's shift of
geostrategic fortune in favor of Hamas's Iranian
military patron state is rather unmistakable.
Israeli leaders may publicly boast of inflicting
heavy damage to Hamas's rocket capability, yet the
fact remains that they failed to reach their
ultimate objective of dismantling that capability,
which is sure to be replenished and strengthened
in the months to come.

Hamas's impressive
rocket capability, which withstood the onslaught
of some 1,500 sorties by Israeli jet fighters
unloading their bombs in the densely populated
area, and the failure of Israel's "iron dome"
interceptors to prevent some 420 rockets from
landing inside Israel, reflects a new "balance of
terror" that chips away at the Tel Aviv's
traditional military supremacy, underscoring

Indeed, this
much can be surmised from the statement of Ali
Baqeri, the undersecretary of Iran's Supreme
National Security Council:

When the Zionist regime can't stand
the resistance in the blockaded Gaza strip, it
is clear that it will definitely have nothing to
say when it comes to the power and strength of
the Islamic Republic.

Similar
sentiments have been expressed by Iran's military
commanders, including by the commander of the
Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari,
who has publicly admitted that Iran has provided
Hamas with the technology to build Fajr-5 rockets
and "their production was rapid".

"If
Israel's intention of provoking this war was to
use it as a prelude for an attack on Iran, then it
was a complete failure mainly because the war
ended in a victory for Hamas, Iran, and [the
Lebanese] Hezbollah, a triumvirate of power that
poses a formidable challenge to any war scenario
against Iran," said a Tehran University political
science professor who spoke on the condition of
anonymity.

The widespread impression that
an Israeli strike on Iran is now even less likely
than in the past as a direct result of the Gaza
war is bound to influence the climate for
negotiation between Iran and the "5+1" nations -
the permanent members of the United Nations
Security Council plus Germany - scheduled for the
near future. The "military option" used to coerce
Iran at the negotiation table, albeit discretely,
has now lost a good deal of its utility, and that
is a definite plus for the diplomatic option.

"At a minimum, the Gaza war's windfall for
Iran has been a wider opening of the diplomatic
window, which should translate into a greater
flexibility and mood for compromise by the Western
governments," said the Tehran professor.

Nuclear talks, the road
aheadAhead of the next round of
multilateral talks, bilateral discussions between
Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) scheduled for the second week of December
in Tehran could pave the way to a modality for
"structured cooperation" aimed at resolving the
outstanding issues invoked in last November's IAEA
report.

IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano
has tacitly admitted that some of the intelligence
report cited in the "annex" to the agency's
November 2011 report may have been questionable,
given his statement that "overall" the annex was
credible; in other words, not all the specific
intelligence fed to the agency was credible.

The key finding of the latest report,
released earlier this month, is that the
inspectors have found no evidence of diversion of
declared nuclear material, in light of the
comprehensive verification mechanisms, including
dozens of short-notice inspections, regular
environmental samplings, and use of surveillance
cameras at all the uranium enrichment halls in
Iran.

Another key finding is that Iran has
converted a large percentage of its 20%-enriched
uranium into fuel plates and has kept its
accumulated quantity to around 110 kilograms,
perhaps as a sign of good will, just as it has not
fed gas into half the centrifuges installed at the
bunkered facility known as Fordo.

In case
the Iran-IAEA talks show real progress as
anticipated by Iran's officials, then it will
inevitably set a better tone for Iran's talk with
the "5+1" representatives headed by European
Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who
at a recent meeting in Brussels emphasized the
importance of sustaining the diplomatic
negotiations.

The question is, of course,
whether the Western negotiators are willing to
take into consideration the strengthening of
Iran's bargaining position as a result of the Gaza
war, which has dampened the mood for a military
strike on Iran. If so, then, how will this
translate into a greater willingness to make
concessions on the Iran sanctions, compared with
previous rounds when the Western governments
refused to consider a softening of sanctions even
if Iran agreed to stop the 20% enrichment?

That was then, and now, after three rounds
of inconclusive talks earlier this year, the stage
is set for a guarded optimism on the prospects of
the next round. Another important development
affecting the talks' environment in Iran's favor
has been the US's decision to force the
postponement of the much-anticipated conference in
Finland on a Middle East free of weapons of mass
destruction.

The US's decision, widely
perceived as a concession to Israel, the main
proliferator in the region, has been strongly
condemned by Iran and a number of Arab countries,
who have pointed at the US's double standard of
selective counter-proliferation exonerating
Israel. Iran's envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar
Soltanieh, has lambasted the US over this matter,
and Iran and Russia have now joined hands in
pushing for an early date next year for such a
conference. [1]

For sure, come the next
round, Iran and the "5+1" nations will have much
to talk about concerning the lofty objective of a
nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East,
which serves Iran's interest in highlighting its
peaceful nuclear intentions. That Iran's
representative may find a more receptive audience
across the negotiation table is, as stated above,
in no small measure directly due to a mini-war in
Gaza that clearly did not go well for Israel.